Question:
You may hear this about companies occassionally.
Be aware that in many cases, this is because the company tells them to come to the terminal.
You won't see them in the truckstop because they are sitting out of sight on their companies property.
What you see (or don't) ain't always what you get.

Answer:
Some times what you see is what you get. Like big companies trucks sitting in TS's all across the US because they don't have loads for them. I know it's a matter of luck, poor timing, being in the wrong place and a list of other poor excuses. With all the bigger company trucks sitting in parking lots it's hard to imagine how many more they have sitting in their yards that are nicely located all over the country. You don't make money sitting because the company sent you to a slow freight area or some other good reason the company has.
Some times what you see is what you get, some companies keep their trucks rolling because they haven't hired an over abundance of drivers and put so many trucks on the road that they can't keep them all busy all the time. Lots of companies don't have terminals in every state they run to hide trucks in.
Good Stuff
"Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of all who threaten it"

Answer:
[QUOTE]Originally posted by Stuffiu:
Some times what you see is what you get. Like big companies trucks sitting in TS's all across the US because they don't have loads for them. I know it's a matter of luck, poor timing, being in the wrong place and a list of other poor excuses. With all the bigger company trucks sitting in parking lots it's hard to imagine how many more they have sitting in their yards that are nicely located all over the country. You don't make money sitting because the company sent you to a slow freight area or some other good reason the company has.[QUOTE]
You will always see ads in the paper for big companies like Schneider, Swift, US Xpress, JB Hunt, Covenant, etc even during the slow times. These companies can somewhat accurately forecast that during a certain time period they will have X amount of freight and Y amount of trucks in their fleet to meet demand. Now, they know they will lose Z amount of drivers due to turnover\attrition so they hire more drivers than they need so as to act as a safety cushion when or IF things pick up. What happens is that they often end up with many more drivers than available freight.
What's interesting is that they pay a very small penalty for over-hiring and having drivers sit idle because OTR companies don't pay an hourly wage nor do they incur overtime charges. Could you imagine a hospital over-hiring nurses who make +$25\hour and then having them sit around doing nothing for 40+ hours (and paying overtime charges of +$37.5\hour) simply because they want to overhire to meet an expected demand that may or may not materialize?
Open up your local newspaper and you'll see alot of jobs for nurses and truckers. Can you guess which industry has the REAL shortage?
http://www.subway.com

Answer:
The companies that overhire drivers and have too little freight DO pay a penalty. They've got money tied-up in expensive equipment just sitting around burning fuel idling.
The trick for a succesful carrier is to keep the truck/freight balance right where they've got a LITTLE available truck surplus -- so they can use this slack if load demand goes up.
Too much demand, not enough trucks = late loads.
And in trucking, on-time SERVICE keeps customers happy and renewing their freight contracts.
So there's usually a little "slack" in the flow.
Diffferent companies handle this slack in different ways.
The most comon is to park the problem drivers, usually the ones that complain the most, and keep the better drivers loaded and rolling. This rewards the most productive drivers, while discouraging the ones they want to quit anyway.
It doesn't always work out that way, but when loads are 'soft', the most productive, compliant drivers are usually given preference to stay loaded WHEN POSSIBLE.
But also, keep in mind:
At 70 hrs per week, that's only 8 average driving hours per day.
So EVERY solo truck is parked many, many hours SOMEPLACE each week. At least the ones you see at truckstops aren't parked for hours-on-end at some customer waiting to get loaded that day.